Living
by Out-of-Character217
Summary: Cloud is not the only one whose legacy of living and surviving becomes a burden. Leon has his own promises to keep.


**A/N:** I'm back, baby! Here's a little something that's been sat on my hard drive for a gazillion years, just to start you off.

Enjoy. xxx

* * *

 **Living**

Screams and smoke pierced the daylight and a torrent of bodies ran through the streets in a crashing surge, scrambling, scratching and crawling to escape. Leon ran headlong into it, fighting against the swell and the eddies of people, digging his shoulders in to claw his way through. Cloud followed closely behind, slipping easily into the spaces made by Leon's slightly larger body.

They reached the square, barely recognisable now, awash with bodies and debris and heartless and fire; the chaos was lethal and intoxicating and it almost made Leon stumble and reel backwards.

Through the upsurge and the terrible wails and cries of fright, Leon saw a person. A flash of something so brilliant that it stopped him in his forward motion hit him in his inner eye and he remembered that face. Long ago when he was still Squall that face had been a part of his life.

A swell of something ferocious broke inside of him and he darted forward crashing into people as they blindsided him in their panic. Cloud followed quickly behind, his sword pulled from its holster now that there was room, mistaking his partner's sudden flight as a warning for danger.

"Kiros." The brunet called, the name lost through the howls and the yells and the roars. "Kiros!" he called again.

The man turned and looked, his face hollow and harrowed and ghosted with terror. His eyes alighted on Leon and widened, fixed and solid, weighty and piercing as the warrior strove nearer. To the old man, the boy was a spectre, a vision of long lost days and a world swallowed in darkness and in the seconds it took to evaluate his face, Kiros felt that distant past creep up over him and turn his body cold.

"Squall!" He gasped, disbelieving.

The boy had grown into a man, so many shades and shadows of his parents that it was difficult to separate them; those flashing eyes, that determined mouth. The shock was so sudden it hurt.

"You survived." It was no question, but an utterance of disbelief; so many had been lost. Kiros had travelled for years and only ever come upon a handful of people from his own world and never anyone he'd known.

"And you." Leon acknowledged, nodding his head in that perfunctory way he did.

Cloud came to stand beside them, his gaze cast curiously between the two men, wondering at their shared past.

"Ay, but only just." Kiros admitted, a shard of pain breaking through his shock.

"Did he make it?" Leon asked, his eyes hardening.

The shift in the brunet's grey orbs turned Kiros, the gesture reminding him so much of his home world and the man who had been his friend for more than twenty years. This boy's father had been a man like no other. Shaking his head, he felt the sickness envelope him all over again. He sensed the blond man beside them tense, raising his sword every now and again as people swarmed and the heartless swooped and howled, but he remained standing, a sentry watching over them as they reunited. Kiros shook his head harder, unnerved by the stillness of the brunet.

"Kiros, did he make it?" Leon barked at him and Kiros realised that he had barely shook his head at all.

"No." He breathed out, just audible above the dying all around them. The hand that Leon had gripped him with, tight around his upper arm fell away and the brunet stumbled slightly. Caught up in the terrible quagmire that had frozen his body Kiros was too slow to react and he watched dumbly as the blond man snapped forward, catching Leon around the top of his arm to steady him.

"You're sure?" He heard Squall say.

"Kiros, are you sure?" He barked again when Kiros failed to answer him.

"Yes." The old man choked out, almost bitterly.

"Leon, who's he talking about… what going on?" Cloud asked, eyes flicking between the two men as his grip tightened on Leon's arm, not for emphasis but because he felt the brunet swaying; he felt the sudden and terrible shock and sensed his weakened knees threatening to buckle beneath him.

"Laguna." Leon mumbled, his brows pinching together briefly. His eyes were harrowed and milky with memory and the name was barely a murmur on his lips as his gaze slid off over the scrabbling crowd, hardly flinching as debris fell from a burning building onto the street opposite them.

More screams rose up from the dust and Cloud felt the urgency crest in him.

"He would have died all over again just to know you're safe." The man named Kiros said, reaching out to place a hand on Leon's shoulder, the gesture neither comforting the brunet nor focusing his wayward emotions. "Squall, you have to know he tried."

The burning house was crumbling faster now, a sharp hiss and a loud crashing bang warning them of falling timber just a few moments before the corner support beam snapped.

Cloud yanked hard on Leon's arm, pulling him aside and under the eaves of an already burnt out shell as the roof collapsed and sent sparks and shards up into the orange night. The two of them crashed to the ground, flinging their arms up to cover their eyes from dust and soot and choked on thick acrid smoke.

As they scrambled to their feet once again, the street cleaved in two by the smouldering wreckage of the burning roof, Leon caught sight of Kiros, sheltered against the lee-side of a house still left standing. The way to him was blocked, but he caught his eye and saw the promise within his gaze.

 _I'll come find you… just make sure you survive._

If there was one thing Leon had been good at, it was living, despite those he was forced to leave behind and alone though it made him.

He felt the urgent tug on his arm and the desperate cry of the blond warrior at his side and although the pain of tearing his gaze away from the old man was almost unbearable, he turned and ran, following his partner back into the desperate fray and awaiting shadows.

* * *

Later, when it was all over and he'd fulfilled yet another promise to survive, Leon stood amongst the dead and dying; their small huddles sat around small camp fires and the glowing embers of the fire damaged wreckage, and he looked out over the once again fallen Hollow Bastion.

What had it all been for: coming here, rebuilding and waiting… hoping?

A poisonous, almost leeching blackness descended on his heart and with heavy shoulders he holstered his gunblade, unsure for the first time in his life if he would ever draw it again. He stood watching and waiting, unknowing what for, lost for action and for a direction.

"Leon." A soft and comforting voice called beside him. The man turned and recognised his companion, that sharp barb in his throat softened by blue eyes and a gentle hand on his shoulder.

"What happened back there?" Cloud asked him.

Leon couldn't answer straight away, though he had every intention of telling him. He'd given up hiding himself from his lover a long time ago. It had been useless anyway.

"Kiros is from my world. He knew my father." Leon explained, knowing the mention of Laguna would be a surprise to the blond man. Leon had never spoken of him before, and Cloud had never asked.

The younger man let his hand fall away from Leon's shoulder, choosing instead to stand beside him and share his stony silence and stoic vigil.

"I'd always hoped…" Leon began, something sharp in his throat halting his thoughts and he had to swallow a few times to ease his words. "I guess it's easier to go on hoping when you don't know for certain." He finished, frowning down at his feet and with a small shake of his head he turned to leave, bereft of anything left to say.

Cloud halted his retreat, reaching out to grasp his wrist and pulled him back around, and with a small tug he stepped into Leon's space. Coyly reaching up, he placed a hand behind his neck and brought the brunet into a rough semblance of an embrace.

Leon resisted, unsure and uncomfortable with the intimate gesture and with clenched fists still locked at his sides he pulled away, guilt and a thousand apologies shining in his darkened eyes.

"Not here." He said, unwilling to let himself fall apart, not until he was ready. He clenched his jaw and turned to leave, picking his way through the scattered and subdued chaos of the ravaged city. His back and shoulders looked bent and broken, his gait uneven, and he staggered as if weighed down by an unseen force, but he walked quickly and silently and Cloud watched him go, confident that he would return to him when he was ready.

Leon was hurting, and nothing would be right again until he was. He was the beating heart of Hollow Bastion – its legacy – and Cloud felt the corporeal effects of his lover's heartache in the very stones beneath his feet. Picking up the sword he'd planted in the ground beside him, Cloud turned from the newly risen sun and made his way back to what remained of their home to wait, their unspoken connection telling him it wouldn't be long, Leon needed him, if only to hold him and lend him his silent support.

Loss was a second nature to them, yet the experience was as fresh and raw as it always was, as if it were new every single time. Rinoa, Seifer, Zell… they were names he'd learnt but people he'd never meet, and Cloud felt that deep down, there would be a thousand memories and countless faces he'd never know.

And really, he was the only person who could ever have understood.


End file.
